alt Hacker NewsIIRC, the grid fins are not strong enough to support the rocket, and reinforcing them would add too much weight to the vehicle.
The plan is to catch the second stage the same way, and the starship in flight now is the first to have mockup pins to test the aerodynamics and see if they cause issues during reentry.
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charles_f • last Thursday at 11:30 PM
I was surprised they were landing them on those fins, makes more sense now.
It seems like they'll need a lot of different vehicles to catch the second stage given the number of pieces I saw in the video.